Het Plafond, a space for the arts and for culture in the home of Willem Besselink and Guus Vreeburg
Gedempte Zalmhaven 761, 3011 BT Rotterdam / NL
Eefje Verstraelen
'The Continent'
January 7 - 28, 2007
Eefje Verstraelen's installation 'The Continent' for Het Plafond challenges both the space of Het Plafond itself, as well as the space on the sidewalk in front of it. Verstraelen proposed a huge constellation of pallets, hovering overhead. Thus, she directs our attention both to that ‘space above’ and to gravity, which becomes a direct experience. She works rotating flashlights into the installation. Their lights and shadows fly along Het Plafond’s walls and ceiling, and across the sidewalk outside. Since Verstraelen’s installation is suspended like a mobile, she had to make sure of all constructional aspects, so that ‘The Continent’ may be both heavy weight and airy.
Verstraelen's installation 'The Continent' at Het Plafond is part of a 'diptych'-presentation by Eefje Verstraelen; as of December 3, 2006 and through January 14, 2007 Verstraelen presents the project 'Being There' at berendsen, galerie voor eigentijdse kunst in Rotterdam
Take a look at Het Plafond
Het Plafond has no regular opening hours, but opens up to the sidewalk at Gedempte Zalmhaven through a huge window. The installation 'The Continent' will thus be visible day and night.
Eefje Verstraelen. Proposal 'TheContinent'
for Het Plafond, Rotterdam; November 2006
© Eefje Verstraelen, Rotterdam; 2006
| Eefje Verstraelen | |
| 1981 | born Venray / NL |
| 1997-2001 | course Multimedia at Graphic Vocaltional College, Eindhoven / NL |
| 2001-2006 | BA-course 'Fine Art' at Willem de Kooning Academy ('Art, media |
| & design'), Rotterdam | |
| 2004 | participant 'Noord Atlantisch licht' / Galerie op de Rotte, Rotterdam; shows 'Urban |
| Fragment' | |
| 2004-2005 | exchange student at Zokei University in Tokyo / Japan |
| 2005 | participant workshop 'Duik in de Dijk', Rotterdam |
| 2006 | participant 'Eindhoven Revisited', De Krabbedans, Eindhoven |
| wins 'Bronze Award' at exhibition 'Hyper Design' in Shanghai/China, as | |
| part of the Shanghai Biennale 2006 for her project 'Temporary & Mobile' | |
| graduation show WdKA, Groot Handelsgebouw Rotterdam | |
| participant 'Brabantrizoom' as part of art project 'De KunstCamping', Heeswijk | |
| participant international workshop 'Parasite: Rotterdam', WdKA | |
| participant 'Grijpen van het ogenblik', Academiegalerie BLAAK10, Rotterdam | |
| 2006-2007 | solo-exhibition at berendsen, galerie voor eigentijdse kunst, Rotterdam |
Eefje Verstraelen lives and works in Rotterdam
Ceilings as special locations
‘Het Plafond – a space for the arts and for culture’ is named after its ceiling. It is over 3.5 meters high. Way above your head, and thus a bit out of sight. In most interiors, the ceiling is somewhat neglected. Often, the budget for interior decoration is spent mainly on floors (tiling, carpetry, parquetry) and/or on walls (wallpaper, stucco, wall paints in trendy colours). Ceilings, however, are out of sight and therefore often out of mind…
In the past, that used to be different. There has been an impressive tradition of vaulting (cfr. gothic cathedrals) or ceiling paintings (Baroque palaces and churches offer rich examples – perspectival compositions and other optical tricks sometimes hide the actual ceiling from perception, and offer a direct peak into the heavens above). The 18th and 19th centuries saw the creation of richly decorated stucco ceilings – the meager remnants of them the imitation-rosettes, still to be found in today’s D.I.Y.-shops. In the past, ceilings were often used to refer to unearthly, weightless issues.
Even in the 20th century, some artists have done projects with ceilings. A conspicuous example are the spectacular ceilings at the Aubette Café in Strassbourg / France, done by artists Theo van Doesburg, Hans Arp and Spohie Täuber-Arp in the 1920’s. In 1992, Dutch artist Leo Vroegindeweij did a ceiling painting at the Museum Fodor in Amsterdam, and a similar one in 1996 in Shell’s Amsterdam laboratory. In 1987, Dutch artist Peter Struycken realized a spectacular ‘lights ceiling’ at the Amsterdam Opera, working with coloured lights at the ceiling of the new Concert Hall in Tilburg in 1997. But all in all, most ceilings nowadays are left bare. People seem reluctant to spend money on spots that are not within regular sight. Which is a pity, because ceilings are extraordinary locations, just because they normally are out of sight, and just because you have to turn your gaze upwards to watch them. In doing so, you may notice that it influences one’s sense of equilibrium – you get into a ‘floating’ state, if it were…
The ceiling at Het Plafond
To explore these special characteristics of ceilings within the interior context, Het Plafond has invited a number of artists over the years to create projects for just that specific location. In 1997, Hermelinde Hergenhahn used the concrete ceiling to project video images of a water surface (note: one saw ‘water’ overhead…!); Toine Horvers installed a series of tiny loudspeakers to create ‘clouds of sounds’. In 2003, Jasper Budel hung a huge stretch of canvas right below the ceiling, covered with imprints of his own body – almost like a Baroque ceiling piece. Recently, projects by Willem Besselink (‘Berlin/Rotterdam’), Eddy van Mourik (‘BERG’ - ’MOUNTAIN’) and Yukihiro Taguchi (‘Bücher Domino’ - ’Domino of Books’) challenged Het Plafond’s ceiling, reaching out to it in various ways. Now, Eefje Verstraelen is at it, installing a hanging construction out of pallets. Verstraelen doesn’t take an easy path, challenging not only the ceiling, but also defying gravity.
Standing on one leg: art and gravity
All things tend to go downward. There, they are at rest. Whoever wants to go upwards needs to invest energy – to counteract gravity. Normally you hardly notice it, but for instance when lifting one block of stone on top another, you feel its weigth. The builders of the pyramids knew all about that: they started out piling blocks from a huge ground floor surface to make sure that the uppermost block – 150 meters up in the air – has been stable over the past 46 centuries. Whoever wants to go up has to cope with not just gravity, but with equilibrium and stability as well. Standing one one leg in stead of the normal two, this becomes obvious. For dancers on ballet slippers it’s the essence of their art: they seem to hover weightlessly, as if there were no gravity at all…
Sculptors, and architects as well, always strive upwards. They always have to deal with gravity, and always need to provide equilibrium and stability. The higher they reach, the more they are appreciated (the Eiffel Tower is a good point in case…). Some sculptor act like classical dancers: Richard Serra placed heavy, thick sheets of steel – slightly curved – on edge. Standing next to a Serra one experiences their delicate balance. Alexander Calder’s sculpture developed from slender, stelt like structures into ‘mobiles’ – seemingly floating and actually in motion! Standing under a Calder one automatically tilts one’s head: you not just experience this floating mobility right overhead, but tilting the head makes you yourself float as well. Gravity makes itself felt: are you standing stable to prevent toppling over? is the construction overhead sufficient to withstand gravity, or might it fall down – on top of you? This is what Damocles must have experienced, a Greek courtier that was punished for persistent flattery by having a sword suspended over his head – dangling from a single horsehair…
Eefje Verstraelen
Eefje Verstraelen uses standard Euro-pallets as building material. Verstraelen: "I’m greatly attracted to bulky, heavy objects, like the ones used in the harbour and in industry. I have an instant feel for them. Take, for instance, these nodding oil pumps with their fascinating rythms.” Pallets attract her as well, both for their industrial looks, their charisma of mobility and temporariness, and their heavily standardized and modularized construction. They can be piled into big volumes. Verstraelen also proposes to re-scale them into bigger or smaller versions, retaining of course their original proportions.
Using all these as building elements, Verstraelen piles them into three-dimensional structures that look almost like pieces of scenery. “Working on these structures is not so much different from when I’m making drawings”, she explains. “Composition is all about creating contrasts and and interesting clusters. I just let it grow under my hands. Sometimes I work on a model scale, doing propositions for urban spaces, sometimes I work on a bigger-than-life scale.” Thus, Verstraelen has created over the past year a number of very diverse projects.
As her graduation project from Willem de Kooning Academy Eefje Verstraelen presented the installation ‘Nomad Construction 1’: a cluster-like cloud of a staggering 6.5 x 3 x 2.5 meters made out of standard pallets and hand made miniature versions, all of it clamped between two existing concrete columns. It was a transparent landscape, to be viewed at from eye’s height. Recently, Verstraelen created the work ‘Being there’, in the basement of a Rotterdam gallery: a labyrinth out of piles of pallets towering up to the ceiling, narrow corridors, split levels and tiny pallet-grottoes (see further below). On the one hand it is hefty and heavy and raw; on the other hand, however, subtle lighting and the sweet scent of that huge bulk of wood, branded by logo’s of all the European countries they originate from turn it into an inviting place, evoking urbanity.
|
|
|
Eefje Verstraelen. 'Nomad Construction I', 2006
pallets; ca 650 x 300 x 250 cm
installation as part of graduation project
at Willem de Kooning Academy
Groot Handelsgebouw, Rotterdam
‘The Continent’ at Het Plafond
And now ‘The Continent’; no less than a ‘continent’! This installation once again is ‘site specific’: custom made for Het Plafond. Scores of pallets – 20 kilos each! – are suspended from the ceiling; not by horse’s hair, but by metal chains attached to 20 heavy bolts drilled into the concrete. The work occupies almost all of the ceiling’s surface and extends even into the space outside, so one has to pass underneath it – it can’t be avoided. All of that huge mass, all of that great weight is hanging above one’s head. These pallets don’t melt together into solid blocks, but remain separate entities in a layered composition, each taking on distinct directions. That ensures that the work, despite all mass, exudes transparency and airiness. This effect is amplified by rotating lamps that are woven into the pallet-structure. They create a dynamic display of light flashes and moving shadows: within and among the pallets themselves, but also in the space surrounding the installation – both inside and on the sidewalk. It’s an urban fairytale. Sometimes the pallets hang, in just a few layers, high up above; sometimes they reach from up there all the way down. This results into a richly diversified alto-rilievo, as in a landscape: a city? hills? a whole continent? It is as if you’re looking down on it, from a plane maybe; in reality, however, you are standing under it, looking upwards. You’d like to imagine the whole world upside down: Het Plafond’s ceiling turning into a floor with Verstraelen’s installation sitting on top of it, with the floor the spectator is walking round on turning into a ceiling… a hallucinating thought, all the more so because all this looking up challenges one’s sense of equilibrium.
Verstraelen didn’t take the easy way out. This is no ‘girly art’. It’s hardly ‘fine art’ any more, even less a ‘scultured object’. Their strong scenic connotations turn Verstraelen’s installations almost into ‘architecture’. In recent photo works, she placed modular models of pallet-constructions against a backdrop of portal installations in Rotterdam’s ‘Europort’-harbour. Verstraelen succeeds in showing us not just the purity and roughness of pallets, but also their more poetic, evocative qualities.
© Guus Vreeburg / Het Plafond, Rotterdam; 070106
The installation 'The Continent'
has been co-sponsored by:
| Program | |
| Januari 6, 2007 | |
| as of 8.30 PM | opening of the presentation; the artist will be present; you are cordially invited to attend |
| January 14 | last day of Eefje Verstraelen's project 'Being There' at berendsen, galerie voor eigentijdse |
| kunst, Rotterdam | |
| January 28 | |
| as of 4.00 PM | finissage of the presentation at Het Plafond |
Information
Willem Besselink: +31 6 19 4343 41
Guus Vreeburg: +31 6 4720 4750
Eefje Verstraelen. 'Being There' (detail), 2006
pallets, ca 900 x 500 x 250 cm
berendsen, galerie voor eigentijdse kunst, Rotterdam